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years prior, he ordered tanks to surround Parliament once more, an illegal attempt for a man in his position. The resulting chaos found over 140 people dead and paved the way for a new constitution, one that would grant Yeltsin all the power he thought necessary to run a country. This move was highly totalitarian, tyrannical even, as it dealt yet another devastating blow to the Russian Federation.

Perhaps the most notably disastrous event that took place during Yeltsin's reign was the assault on Chechnya. Yeltsin arranged for Russian troops to storm across the border into this largely Muslim nation. His ambition was to quench a separatist rebellion. His reward: the bloodiest, most prolonged uprising of his entire career.

The legacy of Yeltsin's eight-year term in office remains splattered with the blood of Russian civilians as well as a spattering of multiple cabinet member firings, including the discharge of four prime ministers. In 1999, Yeltsin resigned in disgrace amidst political controversy. His resignation speech surprised many, and though he was seen as a democratic beacon of hope to many Westerners, his civilians thought differently.

"Yeltsin inherited the Russian state in 1991, and left it in much worse shape than he found it," says Roy Medvedev, a prominent and experienced Russian historian. "His legacy was mostly unhappy, and I don't think the Russian people will remember him with much warmth."

"Yeltsin's main drive was to tear things down; that's what he was good at," says Gennady Chuffrin, the deputy director of the official Institute of World Economy and International Relations in Moscow. "At no stage did Yeltsin attempt to build anything. Things slipped out of his hands, and were taken over by ... business tycoons, regional leaders, and criminal groups. The guiding principle of the Yeltsin era was chaos." Certainly not a vindication of Yeltsin's constructional engineering capabilities.

Many, especially American politicians, will hail Yeltsin as a democratic pioneer for Russia. But ask any Russian who has lived under Yeltsin's rule about his life during those tragic eight years, and he will likely have a different story to tell.

Learn more about this author, Rochelle Nikita.
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